This kind of goes along with my review of Seth Godin’s book last week, but I read a great post today on Vox Fortis, a great communications site by Susan Emmens, entitled “SEO Isn’t Your Salsa.” Basically what she says is that you can want that number one search engine ranking in Google all you want, but what good is it going to do you if your sight and what backs it up isn’t any good? And maybe you will get tons of traffic, but unless that traffic is quality traffic, all it is doing is driving up your hosting expenses without gaining you any customers.

This is where we go back to last week’s review. Search Engine Optimization, SEO, is like whipped cream on the sundae. It needs to be part of your overall strategy and not just something you slap on to an existing methodology. If you get that high Google ranking, where are you going to direct the traffic? What are you going to do with those people once they get to your website? What experience are they goign to receive? What is your overall plan for converting them to long term, permission based customers?

Remember, getting a message out there is fine, but if the message ends up being “look at me! I can generate a lot of noise and traffic but have nothing concrete to back it up,” then you will be doing yourself more harm than good. You remember those companies and websites that promised a lot but just ended up wasting your time. Don’t become one of them.